THERE HAS BEEN NO GLOBAL WARMING SINCE 1995

The academic at the center of the "Climategate" affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble "keeping track" of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers:

Professor Jones told the BBC this weekend there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organizational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is "not as good as it should be."

The data is crucial to the famous "hockey stick graph" used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now -- suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no "statistically significant" warming.

The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that skeptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analyzed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of "scientific fraud" for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Source: Jonathan Petre, "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995," Daily Mail, February 14, 2010.